5 ms·

> they can 10x their profits by only serving elderly clients. I knew of certain defunct malls that decided to get rid of things that doesn't make money and onl

> they can 10x their profits by only serving elderly clients. I knew of certain defunct malls that decided to get rid of things that doesn't make money and only keep the high profit inventories. Soon people stopped coming and they went under..

throwawaygh 5y ago
>> they can 10x their profits by only serving elderly clients. > Soon people stopped coming Ah, yes. Why didn't we think of this before? By increasing the cost of (geriatric) healthcare, we can destroy demand. That's how supply/demand curves work right? In this way the invisible hand delivers unto us a fountain of youth ;)
- Aperocky 5y ago
  They may 10x their profit by serving elderly clients but that is assuming x more elderly clients would want to suddenly come. But why? Are elderly clients underserved in that area? Are they going to ditch their original care provider and all come here?
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    > But why? Old people in the USA are EXTREMELY wealthy in terms of healthcare purchasing power. All retired people have medicare. Many retired people have additional healthcare coverage from their former employers (doesn't exist anymore -- disappeared along with pensions -- but this benefit used to be common). Many retired people have significant savings in addition to medicare and private health insurance. Most new parents have little to no government assistance, do not have significant expendable income, and have little to no accumulated wealth. Children, of course, are even poorer than their deadbeat parents.
  - germinalphrase 5y ago
    What I was told is that elderly people need more and more frequent care. Additionally, reimbursements tend to be higher for the procedures elderly people need vs children.
  - crvdgc 5y ago
    > They may 10x their profit by serving elderly clients but that is assuming x more elderly clients would want to suddenly come. Or by cutting the cost.
titanomachy 5y ago
If we stop providing health care to young people, then everyone will just die and there won't be any old people left to profit off of.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  No, more likely you'd see a ton of alternative medicine and self-diagnostic/treatment options for young people. I'm not entirely sure that I wouldn't want this.
  - lupire 5y ago
    You want young people using GOOP for medical care?
  - grapeskin 5y ago
    Yeah, young people rubbing tea tree oil on their tumors, drinking spoonfuls of olive oil to cure their appendicitis, and vaporizing fruit peel oils to “cure” kids of infectious diseases. Just what the world needs more of.
mumblemumble 5y ago
The Invisible Hand works generally fine-ish for non-essential and commodity goods. People might be sad their favorite store went away, but, for the most part, life goes on. It seems to even be the least bad way to handle these sorts of things. It's a bit harder for me to see this as an acceptable approach to health care. Not every segment of the economy needs to be a constant drunkard's walk in search of maximum profitability in the aggregate. Sometimes what the public actually desires is stability and reliability.
- mdavis6890 5y ago
  Will people pay more for stability and reliability? If so, then that is what businesses will optimize for. Businesses exist to give us what we want. Those that do it well are profitable, those that don’t aren’t. Keep in mind that the effort spent to make healthcare more stable could have instead been used to provide more healthcare overall. Or something else entirely, like shoes or haircuts. All services are not as good as they could be, because the effort beyond “good enough” gets shifted to some other more valuable purpose, where things are not good enough yet.
  - tangjurine 5y ago
    I think you are implying that most people are 'happy enough' with the current businesses they interact with. Most people realize that a business will only change if a significant portion of buyers change their spending habits, and individually choosing to not support a business out of ethical concerns only hurts themselves. Then there ends up being a lot of people who buy products from businesses they hate, and would support collective action against those businesses, like passing laws. People like that aren't dumb, they are just trying to work around how their next best option is so much worse than buying the original product.
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    > Will people pay more for stability and reliability? Given that the USA pays higher-than-average prices for poorer-than-average outcomes, I'd say this is a spurious hypothetical, mostly useful for helping to demarcate the point where economics ceases to be an empirical, scientific pursuit and instead becomes a sort of low-rigor offshoot of moral philosophy. But, back in the realm of epiricism, we know that this is one of those situations where closer government regulation can produce higher quality of service at lower cost, because the rest of the developed world has figured out multiple successful formulae for doing so. The only clear downside, if you can call it that, is that their hospital administrators don't seem to have quite such large collections of luxury watches.

throwawaygh 5y ago

>> they can 10x their profits by only serving elderly clients. > Soon people stopped coming Ah, yes. Why didn't we think of this before? By increasing the cost of (geriatric) healthcare, we can destroy demand. That's how supply/demand curves work right? In this way the invisible hand delivers unto us a fountain of youth ;)

Aperocky 5y ago
They may 10x their profit by serving elderly clients but that is assuming x more elderly clients would want to suddenly come. But why? Are elderly clients underserved in that area? Are they going to ditch their original care provider and all come here?
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > But why? Old people in the USA are EXTREMELY wealthy in terms of healthcare purchasing power. All retired people have medicare. Many retired people have additional healthcare coverage from their former employers (doesn't exist anymore -- disappeared along with pensions -- but this benefit used to be common). Many retired people have significant savings in addition to medicare and private health insurance. Most new parents have little to no government assistance, do not have significant expendable income, and have little to no accumulated wealth. Children, of course, are even poorer than their deadbeat parents.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  What I was told is that elderly people need more and more frequent care. Additionally, reimbursements tend to be higher for the procedures elderly people need vs children.
- crvdgc 5y ago
  > They may 10x their profit by serving elderly clients but that is assuming x more elderly clients would want to suddenly come. Or by cutting the cost.

titanomachy 5y ago

If we stop providing health care to young people, then everyone will just die and there won't be any old people left to profit off of.

cryptonector 5y ago
No, more likely you'd see a ton of alternative medicine and self-diagnostic/treatment options for young people. I'm not entirely sure that I wouldn't want this.
- lupire 5y ago
  You want young people using GOOP for medical care?
- grapeskin 5y ago
  Yeah, young people rubbing tea tree oil on their tumors, drinking spoonfuls of olive oil to cure their appendicitis, and vaporizing fruit peel oils to “cure” kids of infectious diseases. Just what the world needs more of.

mumblemumble 5y ago

The Invisible Hand works generally fine-ish for non-essential and commodity goods. People might be sad their favorite store went away, but, for the most part, life goes on. It seems to even be the least bad way to handle these sorts of things. It's a bit harder for me to see this as an acceptable approach to health care. Not every segment of the economy needs to be a constant drunkard's walk in search of maximum profitability in the aggregate. Sometimes what the public actually desires is stability and reliability.

mdavis6890 5y ago
Will people pay more for stability and reliability? If so, then that is what businesses will optimize for. Businesses exist to give us what we want. Those that do it well are profitable, those that don’t aren’t. Keep in mind that the effort spent to make healthcare more stable could have instead been used to provide more healthcare overall. Or something else entirely, like shoes or haircuts. All services are not as good as they could be, because the effort beyond “good enough” gets shifted to some other more valuable purpose, where things are not good enough yet.
- tangjurine 5y ago
  I think you are implying that most people are 'happy enough' with the current businesses they interact with. Most people realize that a business will only change if a significant portion of buyers change their spending habits, and individually choosing to not support a business out of ethical concerns only hurts themselves. Then there ends up being a lot of people who buy products from businesses they hate, and would support collective action against those businesses, like passing laws. People like that aren't dumb, they are just trying to work around how their next best option is so much worse than buying the original product.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  > Will people pay more for stability and reliability? Given that the USA pays higher-than-average prices for poorer-than-average outcomes, I'd say this is a spurious hypothetical, mostly useful for helping to demarcate the point where economics ceases to be an empirical, scientific pursuit and instead becomes a sort of low-rigor offshoot of moral philosophy. But, back in the realm of epiricism, we know that this is one of those situations where closer government regulation can produce higher quality of service at lower cost, because the rest of the developed world has figured out multiple successful formulae for doing so. The only clear downside, if you can call it that, is that their hospital administrators don't seem to have quite such large collections of luxury watches.